Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis. His theories of the unconscious, repression, drives and the death drive transformed understanding of human subjectivity and motivation.
Freud’s concepts provide frameworks for analysing how subjects invest libidinally in structures that harm them. The unconscious, symptom-formation and repetition compulsion illuminate dimensions of social domination irreducible to rational interest or ideology.
Related: capitalist-unconscious, jouissance, digital-unconscious